1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method of packaging reasoning heuristics so that they can be easily attached to data, thereby effectively creating individual and self-describing knowledge capsules which can be stored or transmitted through a network using standard and widely available software techniques. The technique is particularly advantageous in distributed knowledge architectures, such as multi-agent environments in which knowledge is communicated or transferred between independent parts of the architecture.
2. Description of the Related Art
Even though there has been much study on knowledge representation and reasoning based on the entity-relation paradigm (semantic networks, conceptual graphs, frames), the focus has been on how functionally powerful these systems are, such as what type of information can be stored, and what type of inferencing can be made.
Conventional systems implementing this paradigm have centralized architectures and reasoning heuristics which are available to the system permanently, thereby causing each system to be isolated from a system having different architecture and reasoning heuristics. Furthermore, reasoning is rule-based, as opposed to navigation-based reasoning.
With the advent of multiagent environments, the focus of knowledge systems has been centered on partial knowledge management, and system-wide heuristics (i.e., what assertions can be made of the system as a whole).
The conventional knowledge systems using this whole-system approach have not worked well in multiagent environments. Thus, hither to the present invention, there has been no knowledge system providing the capability to construct inferences in a multiagent environment, using data and heuristics independent of any specific domain.